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Thursday, 22 December 2011

It's not lunch without a little bit of drama.

I started today in an incredibly rare moment of chipperness. This was down to Beyonce's 'Love on top.' I have been bouncing down the street, waving at random strangers and dancing with others all morning.

Such was my delight over this song, I played it to Work-Buddy-James as we went out to lunch. If there has been any decision I have regretted entirely in my life it was this one.

You see, it started out fine. Work-Buddy-James admitted that, even though he doesn't usually like Beyonce's songs, he had to admit this was a good one. I danced joyously in my seat to the upbeat tune as he drove the car. He then mentioned how he was tempted to undo my seatbelt and break suddenly so I ended up going through the window. I laughed nervously at his very morbid dark side as I do every time it rears it's head. You know, it was a normal if not slightly chipper lunchtime.

We ate lunch in a car park and sung some karaoke from YouTube videos, as you inevitably always do when you are in the presence of Work-Buddy-James. Things were fine.

Then Work-Buddy-James had an idea, one that ruined the whole lunchtime. As I had shared one song with him on the way up here, he would share some songs of his own with me.

However, these were not new songs, these were songs that he had shared on several occasions with me in the past. Songs that have been permanently engraved onto my eardrums so that sometimes, late at night, I wake up screaming to the sound of them in my head.

He treated this experience like it was the first time he had ever played these songs to me. A fact I fervently countered amongst my desperate begs to not play the songs again.

You see, Work-Buddy-James has this fascination with learning songs that are either

A: In Chinese
B: A comprehensive list of things (eg: The animaniacs song listing all the countries in the world).
C: Both of the above (eg: A song listing all the tube stations in China).

As such he plays these songs and then proceeds to sing the entire song off by heart, looking at me for praise and admiration over how clever he has been in knowing random crap that probably took him the majority of the social life in his entire existence to perfect.

Now I'm not saying I wasn't slightly impressed at this... The first time he sung it to me a year ago. However now we're on what feels like the 146th time and I simply don't have the energy to support this habit anymore.

Not that that makes a tiny bit of difference:

Work-Buddy-James has been shortened to WBJ

WBJ:(Finishes singing the Animaniacs song) Ooh, have I played you the-Me: Yes. WBJ: You'll love it. Me: For the love of all that is sacred, please do not play the China tube station song. WBJ: Ooh! I'd forgot about that one. (Searches for it on his phone)Me: I'm begging you James. Please, let's listen to something else. Anything else. WBJ: But I know all the stations!Me: I know you do James. WBJ: You're going to be really impressed. Me: I'm really not. WBJ: Here we go. (He plays the song)Me: I hate you. WBJ:(He finishes the song) Now, what's next?Me:(I see that he's searching through his Chinese playlist and so I pull his hand back) Please, for the sake of our friendship, stop. I honestly don't think we'll survive another song. WBJ: You played me your song. Me: I played you one song. You have been playing me your crap for half an hour!!

The car falls silent as we both face away from each other and look out the window

WBJ: You're not going to come out to lunch with me anymore, are you?Me: If I'm perfectly honest, right now I don't know the answer to that.

Later things eased off and we managed to waste 45 minutes talking solely about teeth, taking 20 minutes to count our own. In case you wondered - I have 16 on the bottom and 16 on the top. Work-Buddy-James has 12 on the bottom and 12 on the top.